“Traffic” by Alexandr Trubetskoy is licensed under CC BY 2.0

As a lifelong, driver’s licenceless Winnipegger, I’ve become privy to the ways that car culture is deeply embedded in the fabric of our city. In the years I’ve been reading novels, making conversation with strangers, and thanking bus drivers for getting me from points A to B, I’ve encountered a slew of folks who’d rather pay the hefty price tag associated with driving than take advantage of a cheaper public transit alternative.

I love taking the bus—and yet, I’m not naive to the less desirable aspects of public transit as it currently stands. During Winnipeg’s frigid winters, my legs have become frostbitten while watching wait times change from five minutes to 15 to 30 or more.

These aren’t an inherent failure of buses—they’re a failure of political will. A robust, adequately funded, affordable public transit system greatly reduces traffic congestion, drastically reduces emissions, and improves mobility. Most importantly, it affords everyone a right of access to the city, including disabled people, seniors, and low-income residents.

In the face of the climate crisis, electric vehicles have been gaining traction as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Yet, despite Elon Musk’s ambitions, it’s evident that electric cars won’t solve the myriad of issues that automobiles cause. Reliance on cars has influenced suburban sprawl, the necessitation of parking lots, and, of course, longer commutes.

Cars also take up an insurmountable amount of urban space. In a 2019 study on parking conducted by the City of Edmonton, it was found that, on average, the maximum usage rate was just 41 percent during the middle of the day. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age Google, Uber, and Elon Musk author James Wilt describes the urban transit crisis as fundamentally one of space. “Space in a city is a zero-sum game; every square foot that’s prioritized to one form undermines the possibility of another,” he writes.

A city with fewer people using cars is one where we can begin to imagine what a city built for people, not cars, looks like. Parking lots can be transformed into community gardens and cooperative spaces that spark more joy than storage for cars that aren’t in use 95 percent of the time do. Public transit itself can become a site of solidarity building between drivers and riders—whether it’s fighting a fare increase or expanding access.

Yet, getting there will require more than policy—implementing frequent, fare-free service is just the tip of the iceberg in cities like Winnipeg and in most of North America, where car culture permeates everything from coming-of-age fantasies to city planning. How do we persuade folks who would rather suffer the inconveniences and price tag of driving downtown instead of hopping on a rapid transit line? Convincing these types to make the switch requires a massive shift in the consciousness of a city toward seeing transit as a universal, public good.

In this sense, driving must be rendered not merely inconvenient, but downright dreadful. This will require actions like reducing speed limits and eliminating parking spaces, while simultaneously propping up a robust public transit system—one that is frequent, low-cost or fare-free, and accessible to all. Crucially, public transit must remain under democratic, public ownership.

An investment in public transit is an investment in everyone’s right to access the city. To make a just transition from the private spaces of cars to the public spaces of transit, we must incentivize the latter while rigorously disincentivizing the former. With frequent service, fare elimination and a move away from car-centric urban planning, environment and equity go hand in hand. We only have to make public transit accessible and irresistible to all.

Image by hanspetermeyer.com; marked with a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Dear Canadian employers,

I come to you with a plea from menstruators across the country: please implement period policies at your place of business. Actually, let me rephrase that—we need period policies in the workplace now.

Periods are an incredible phenomenon in which a person bleeds from their nether regions every 21 to 35 days for four to eight days for roughly 40 years and are expected to perform up to par, and under the same conditions, as their non-bleeding colleagues. Individuals may suffer from abdomen cramps, nausea, diarrhea, or even pass out from the associated pain. Some menstruators battle painful period-related disorders like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and more. Yet, they’re expected to shut up and stop complaining because our patriarchal society is so fragile that speaking up about our anguish is taboo.
On behalf of all menstruators, this is an official wake-up call to anyone who still thinks this way in the 21st century. The answer to alleviating our woes is plain and simple, and it’s been in front of us this whole time: period policies.

These policies, also known as menstrual leave, allow individuals experiencing periods to take paid time off work to recuperate as they bleed. A number of countries have already made menstrual leave a reality, including Taiwan, Italy, Zambia, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. The ability to take menstrual leave provides some financial and psychological reprieve to menstruators as their uteruses undergo a bloody wave of chaos each month.

Cramps and heavy bleeding lead to the loss of productivity for almost nine days a year for people who menstruate. Yet, menstruation pain doesn’t fall under the types of leaves that employees can currently access in Canada. To uphold human rights, we must adopt specific period policies to remove barriers at work.

We are privileged to live in a nation where periods, perfectly regular bodily functions, can be discussed. This is not true for some parts of the world. Roughly 50 percent of the global population menstruates, yet periods are still seen as taboo. In fact, globally, pseudonyms are used to describe periods instead of using the appropriate terminology.

Particularly in countries run by conservative governments, menstruators are deprived of their right to lead fulfilling lives at home and at work because of cultural norms that stem from patriarchal mindsets rooted in misogyny. Menstruators are viewed as impure or unprofessional and are prevented from excelling in their careers due to this stigma.

Trust me when I say it doesn’t have to be this way. The onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to reimagine work—with many employers placing accessibility and comfortability at the forefront of their priorities over the expectations of corporate powers hyper-focused on working us to the bone.
Working from home has paved the way for companies to reimagine their workplace policies to accommodate everyone rather than cater solely to the cisgender, straight white male population. Being able to wear pyjamas while at work, not having to constantly dread leaking in public, and comfortably taking multiple bathroom breaks without being on the receiving end of a hairy eyeball has been an unacknowledged relief during these trying times.

As vaccination rates increase and our ability to return to the workplace looks bright, the pandemic has shown us that we cannot, in good conscience, return to the status quo. Change is inevitable and it’s time for Canadian workplaces to put themselves at the forefront of the fight against menstrual taboos.

It starts with you. Because believe me, if these policies were enacted the first time around, we wouldn’t be needing this conversation right now.

Period,
Kirti Vyas

I was 14 years old when I first kissed a girl—and there were more after that—but it took a global pandemic and months of self-reflection to get to a place where I felt comfortable calling myself bisexual.

I’m far from alone. The pandemic presented an opportunity for many closeted queer people to look inwards and come out, with 5.6 percent of U.S. adults identifying as LGBTQ2S+ in 2020 compared to 4.5 percent in 2017. While similar Canadian stats aren’t readily available, my own anecdotal research tells me the trend has been happening here, too.

Shortly after coming out to friends and family, I realized how few queer people I had in my life and how badly I wanted to find a community of folks who understood what I was going through firsthand. There was just one small problem: it was still a pandemic and going out into the world to meet new people wasn’t an option. So, I did what any pop culture enthusiast in my position would do and turned to television.

If I couldn’t form an in-person community just yet, I knew for certain I could find one on screen.

I began by rewatching my favourite episode of the anthology series Easy. The episode, called “Spontaneous Combustion,” follows the main character as she endures a messy breakup with her live-in girlfriend and falls in like with her colleague while the two women work on a progressive political campaign together. Though I had seen it before, watching it after my own coming out allowed me to see myself in these characters for the first time—at least aspirationally. They are secure in who they are and confident enough to pursue a connection when they feel one. Watching them move through the world as self-assured queer women allowed me to imagine myself doing the same.

And then there was Schitt’s Creek, which inspired me with its utopian depiction of a world without homophobia. In the series, Dan Levy’s character shares an impeccably accurate analogy about what it means to be pansexual: “I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé … I like the wine and not the label,” he says. Who knew hearing a fictional character echo my own preferences back to me could provide such validation? How could I possibly feel alone while hearing my very own sentiments coming out of someone else’s mouth?

But, the show that allowed me to fully immerse myself in an on-screen community was Netflix’s 2019 miniseries Tales of the City. Initially unfamiliar with Armistead Maupin’s work, I was delighted to discover a series that doesn’t only feature queer characters and storylines but is itself queer by definition. The series’ setting at 28 Barbary Lane—a fictional San Francisco apartment complex that functions as a safe haven for queer youth—made me long for a community gathering place of my own, but it also made me feel part of theirs. And the diverse cast—more reflective of real-life queer communities than the overwhelmingly white casts I was accustomed to seeing—was a refreshingly realistic sight, while the various romances allowed me to envision myself in a happy and healthy queer relationship.

Getting to see people like me on screen has been a fundamental part of learning to accept all of myself—allowing me to dream bigger and bolder when it comes to figuring out what I want for my own life. Queer television has helped me to feel part of a community I have not yet found, like I belong in a world that is still unfamiliar offscreen. It has given me a stronger sense of self at a time when almost everything has been in flux. I hope to soon be able to find the real-life community I have been longing for, but, in the meantime, you can be sure to find me with my fictional pals, perfectly content, in front of the screen.

Photo courtesy Ami Sangha

Over a decade out of art school, Vancouver-based artist Ami Sangha has found her niche. Sangha is the owner of Ami Like Miami, an online shop where she sells handmade ceramic dishes, painted with funky patterns and bright colours.

During her undergraduate degree, Sangha studied printmaking. In her late twenties, she fell into a deep depression, which prevented her from creating for a couple of years. While Sangha worked to get out of her depression, she took a ceramics class, which contributed to her healing. “I felt really free in ceramics, like I felt this sort of childlike way of trying to experiment and play and it felt so uplifting,” says Sangha.

Now, Sangha has a process when designing ceramics, which includes referencing various photos, colours and patterns that she’s found, sketching the design and going into her studio to make it. Still, there’s room for experimentation. “Recently I saw someone wearing a sweater vest, and I was like, I love that pattern. I’m going to try and make it with ceramics.”

In 2019, Sangha started making what is now her signature wavy dish. After gaining interest locally, Sangha’s ceramics grew in popularity in mid-2020 when the dish garnered attention on Instagram (@ami.like.miami). The success led to orders from larger retailers like Home Union and Wolf Circus, which further increased her audience. “Last summer I didn’t do anything but paint. The pandemic ended up being great timing,” she says. At this point, Sangha has sold between 600 and 700 wavy dishes.

Despite the growth, Sangha is a one-woman maker. She prioritizes slow creation and aims to release a new ceramics collection every year. “These are pieces of art to me, and I can’t go any faster than what I’m doing,” she explains. “It’s really important for these [pieces] to be coming from me and my body and my hands.”

This growth has also given Sangha the platform to share her Indian and Ukrainian identity. “If you want to ascribe to Ami Like Miami, you’re also following my political views, my personal views, how I feel about
my family and where I’m from, and that’s been really freeing,” she says. “As a first-generation Canadian, it’s a very overwhelming feeling to get to experience this type of freedom.”

Sangha is currently testing new ceramic styles and hopes to have them released by the holidays. In the future, she plans to expand beyond ceramics and have an art show, the first since her art school days. But one thing is certain: she’ll trust her intuition. “It’s important for me to express myself in whatever medium pulls me at the moment, and for right now it’s clay.”

In These Lifeless Things, by Edmonton writer Premee Mohamed, a character looks at her partner in a post-apocalyptic landscape. “We could make love right here!” she thinks. “Who, in this dead city, would stop us?”

Amid pandemics, rising fascism and climate disaster, science fiction writers are imagining new futures in new ways.

Mohamed is a 40-year-old Indo-Caribbean scientist and writer. Her debut novel, the cosmic horror Beneath the Rising, is currently shortlisted for Canada’s Aurora Award. She has several novels and novellas published or forthcoming, including this summer’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight, set many generations from now, in a city-state in which the government can hunt and kill anyone who isn’t employed.

This September, ECW Press published The Annual Migration of Clouds, set in a struggling post-collapse community in what was once the University of Alberta, where Mohamed did two degrees. Though remnants remain, universities have become distant dreams.

“The truth is, of course, that the chain did break,” thinks Reid, the young female protagonist in The Annual Migration of Clouds. “And not once but again and again and again; and not just in the transmission of knowledge from the learned to the unlearned but also parent to child, elder to youth, country to country, every way you could think of. We live in the scattered links that remain.”

Mohamed grew up reading science fiction, with influences stretching from Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves to H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine, which shows a deeply divided future humanity.

“I was really struck by that, as a kid,” Mohamed says. “It must have formed part of my fictional DNA, because I guess I was thinking, what does drive us as we go along, as humanity goes along, to a common cause? Rather than splintering like that into more and more distinct groups that have less and less contact with each other?”

When Mohamed was a kid, the disaster looming over every imagined future was nuclear war. Now, it’s climate change. Mohamed’s job as a reclamation and remediation policy specialist in the Alberta public service includes “future proofing” policies related to the impacts of industrial activity on the land, looking at trends, modelling and tipping points.

“I realize now that the only thing that is positioned to make the needle move on climate change, the only thing that’s big enough, is government. And governments have to coordinate to do that together.”

Governments did not coordinate to prevent millions from dying of COVID-19, Mohamed notes.
“So I’m unfortunately profoundly pessimistic about humanity’s ability to stop climate change, rather than just come up with increasingly baroque ways to deal with it, that will be increasingly segregated into: who has the money to survive the effects of climate change in their area, and who doesn’t.”

The Annual Migration of Clouds is not alone among recent science fiction in exploring the future at a local level; another example is Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow, in which an Indigenous community finds its own ways to deal with widespread disaster.

The choice of whether we splinter or work together is before us. But even in a fractured future, stories such as Mohamed’s show how community persists in the cracks.

Before March of 2020, I found myself on a video conference once or twice a week. Back then, it still had something special to it, helping me connect to colleagues all over the world. Then, the world turned upside down because of COVID-19, and I found myself spending several hours per day on video calls to manage remote teams from home—let’s say the past excitement of video conferencing swiftly disappeared.

Video calls have been around for decades, with webcams and software such as Skype becoming popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The impact of Skype was so important that it inserted itself into our vocabulary: videoconferencing became “Skyping.” The pandemic redefined the use of video calls, as people around the world were forced to shelter in place and practice social distancing. The app Zoom, in particular, has since become a staple of both remote work and gathering with family and friends, even taking Skype’s place in our vocabulary and spawning new concepts, such as “Zoom fatigue.” Put simply, Zoom fatigue is when one feels tired from having been focused on video calls for too long. Video calls can be overstimulating: the feeling of being watched constantly, the strain from processing multiple social cues in the gallery of faces, and delays in both audio and video, contribute to an overall feeling of exertion.

After about a year and a half of remote work and social distancing, videoconferencing took a back seat as several new audio-only apps were released, gaining incredible popularity. The app generating the most hype in spring 2021 was Clubhouse, a networking app based on voice. Clubhouse users can create chat rooms, or drop into others’ rooms to listen or participate in discussions, often with complete strangers.

Other apps like Teamflow and Kumospace, meanwhile, recreate an office’s environment and let their employees mingle more easily. They offer an alternative to Zoom fatigue and recreate serendipitous moments like chance encounters and coffee machine conversations. The audio trend has already been reported on by national outlets such as Wired, identifying audio as the future of social media and communications.

Is the future really audio? While the trendiness of audio-centric apps is exciting, they raise important concerns regarding accessibility for the blind and vision-impaired as well as Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. These demographics are expected to grow over the next decades due to an aging population as well as other factors; vision loss in particular is predicted to double in the next 25 years, according to VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, an initiative launched by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Moreover, there is no credible census available to determine exactly how many Canadians are living with a disability. According to the Canadian Association of the Deaf- Association des Sourds du Canada (CAD-ASC), the census usually provided by Statistics Canada isn’t available in ASL or LSQ (Langue des Signes Québécoise), and uses convoluted language that leads to misreported numbers. Wissam Constantin, the vice-president of Governance and Membership of the CAD-ASC, explained the importance of sign language to the Deaf population: “Often people will only refer to spoken languages when it comes to being fluent or multilingual, for example English. But sign language [ASL] is not just a bunch of gestures or movements; it is a true language with a structure, grammar and syntax.” Using closed-captioning on calls or communicating by email instead of having an interpreter is not being absolutely accessible, Constantin says, as it doesn’t give the individual the ability to choose their preferred method of communication. Without any closed-captioning or video capabilities, audio-only apps can be hard, if not impossible, to access for Deaf populations; as for blind and vision-impaired populations, difficulties lie within the design of the apps and their compatibility with screen readers. Screen readers are speech software that read the text displayed on screen and help the user navigate commands, buttons and even images, and alternative text and accessibility must be built into the apps to allow for compatibility.

Unfortunately, accessibility is too often an afterthought when developing and designing new apps or features, and many popular apps do not meet the web accessibility guidelines, which are a set of recommendations to ensure content is accessible to a wider range of populations. Discord, which started out as an audio chat service for online gamers but recently rebranded as a place for everyone to hang out, has been criticized for how they approach accessibility. While they have been adding features to help vision-impaired users better navigate the app in recent months, it’s been slow progress, and it clashes with their fresh branding. Twitter came under fire last year when they launched their own audio feature, Spaces, which lets users record their tweets instead of being restricted to 280 characters, because it lacked accessibility. It was revealed that the company doesn’t have a team dedicated to accessibility, and that ensuring features are accessible falls to volunteer employees.

Clubhouse is exclusive not only in design: as an invite-only app, it gives out invitations to members so they can invite their friends. In short, chances of getting on there are slim, and as an audio-only app with no closed-captioning feature, it de facto excludes hard-of-hearing and Deaf people. However, it’s not the only social media app whose concept is exclusive in nature. Instagram, for example, can be of little interest for blind and vision-impaired individuals. Marcia Yale, the national president of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, confesses to loving Clubhouse because “it levels the playing field. No one can see me … it’s not a two-tier system. I understand that the Deaf community would probably not like Clubhouse, but there’s Instagram, which is mostly pictures, which I’m not crazy about.” The world of social media is certainly not lacking options, between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, to name just a few. Asked if she thought there were enough options to cater to everyone, Yale says: “I think there’s room in the world for apps that work for everyone, apps that work for some people. I think there’s room enough.”

Constantin expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community has, out of sheer necessity, been using other apps to communicate, such as Marco Polo, a video chat app. Newcomers such as Clubhouse are not taking those spaces away, though they remain inaccessible to Deaf people.

It’s another story when it comes to work or study, and that’s where accessibility is still a big challenge. When joining a new company, an individual doesn’t have the luxury to choose which communication software their employer is using, which means they can easily be left behind. It would seem that accessibility is not only a question of accessible software, but accessibility-minded leadership as well.

Constantin gives an example of such a situation members of CAD-ASC often encounter: “Deaf individuals who work in [a]predominantly hearing workplace will be told that there are captions, or they’ll have a meeting and say to that Deaf individual: ‘We’ll just send you the notes,’ rather than having them included in the meeting. And if you have any concerns, rather than those being brought up in the meeting, as part of the meeting, just send an email with your concerns instead of providing that actual access to the meeting.

Now, sometimes those meetings are on the phone, they’re not a video chat, right, and that is also another barrier.” Teamflow and Kumospace create virtual environments and use proximity chat to create little bubbles of conversation, in a similar way an in-person event would, allowing participants to leave conversations and join new ones easily. Teamflow didn’t respond to requests for comment. Kumospace co-founder Brett Martin was happy to discuss their product. Martin readily admitted that Kumospace had plenty of room for improvement, but that accessibility and inclusivity were paramount to the start-up: closed-captioning and image alt text were built into the app’s design, making it easy to use and navigate for Deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as screen reader users.

To say that the future of social media and communication is audio is digital ableism, which means it is designed with abled individuals in mind and leaves disabled people to find solutions to be able to use the apps. While a part of the population can partake in the hype and excitement brought by the likes of Clubhouse, others are relying on very different apps to be able to connect with the world.

Whether a perfect, accessible social media app exists or not is up for debate. Both Yale and Constantin agree that Zoom is the best option in terms of overall accessibility for remote communication. At the end of the day, the specific app being used is not the most important consideration, but rather accommodating people as individuals is. As Constantin says, “Don’t pick the accommodation for the person who’s being accommodated. Instead, ask them the way they would like to be accommodated.”

Photo by Michelle Spollen

Back in April, a friend and I had met up to grab smoothies at a café before going on a lockdown walk.

We each ordered, and I pulled out my debit card to pay. “Sorry, cash only,” said the woman behind the counter. I stared blankly at her, then my friend. “I don’t have any cash,” I said; my friend confirmed that she didn’t either. We apologized to the woman, then made our way to another café that took cards.

Even before the pandemic, Canada had been trending toward becoming a cash-free society: cash transactions have been declining steadily since 2011, when contactless debit and credit (i.e. tap) first gained popularity. While two-thirds of Canadians reported using contactless credit or debit in 2018, 90 percent of unbanked people (meaning those who have no relationship to a bank) report using cash.

Since the start of the pandemic, many businesses started banning cash transactions due to concerns about it being a nesting ground for the COVID-19 virus. A new report by FIS Global, an international FinTech company that uses technology to better engage in financial markets, states that since the COVID-19 pandemic began, cash transactions have declined by more than half. It also states that FIS Global expects cash to be used for only four percent of in-store payments by 2024.

It seems like very few banked people I know use cash these days. The friend that I had been walking with said she hadn’t taken cash out of an ATM since March 2020, before the pandemic—something I realized was true for me too, after thinking about it.

With what seems like the imminent death of cash, sped up by the COVID-19 pandemic, I wonder if the things we give cash to, being mainly small businesses and each other, will also disappear. As some of us adapt, who might get left behind?

The history of widespread cash use is a relatively short one. Standardized currency was first implemented in some regions of the world in the Axial Age, from 800 to 300 BCE, then again after periods of disuse in East Asia and Europe during the 15th century. Before its employment, people would use whatever was relatively abundant around them as a surrogate, like metal nails or cod, or would run up personal credits with each other’s businesses.

The second attempt to introduce a mass standardized currency coincided with the advent of capitalism in the 16th century. Adam Smith, a prominent economist of the 18th century, believed that it would be advantageous for a country to bring everyday transactions into a uniform currency, and to abandon the practice of mercantilism, which involved the crown accumulating as much bullion (gold or silver, before coining) as it could.

As the colonial exploits of Spain and Portugal brought massive amounts of silver into the European economy, it became more possible to regulate currency, and to remunerate everyone with the same reward. Near the same time, standardized paper money, backed by bullion, became more common, and was another means to regulate transactions.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, central banks increasingly assumed control of printing paper money.
In Canada, Indigenous people had longstanding practices of trading, using items of copper, precious metals, and furs as the basis of a currency. Early settlers used a variety of items as currency, including playing cards with royal stamps, French and Spanish silver coins, the British pound, Nova Scotian money (a currency used in Nova Scotia until 1871), American money and “army bills,” before a standardized Canadian currency eventually became more circulated in the decades after confederation.

The many types of currencies meant that money had many forms up until the 20th century. Money then became pretty standardized, with cash as the main method of payment, until two new forms of payment were introduced in Canada: credit in 1968 and debit in 1988. It took a while for debit to catch on, though, and it wasn’t until 1994 that it was offered by all banks and accepted by retailers in every province.
By 2009, however, cash accounted for only 54 percent of transactions, and this dropped to 33 percent by 2017.

The question then is, who uses cash these days? In the U.S., 55 percent of small businesses don’t accept credit cards. In a study conducted in Canada in 2008, 93 percent of businesses accepted debit, while 92 percent accepted credit, and all accepted cash.

Many small businesses prefer cash because they don’t incur processing surcharges. Salon SLiJ, a longtime hairdressing salon in Montreal, used to accept cash and e-transfers but began accepting only e-transfers during the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oleg, the manager of the salon, who prefers to go by first name only, says that, like many salons through the pandemic, “our sales were down more than fifty percent.”

Nikhil Tangirala, an urban planner who lives in Montreal, says that he stopped using cash during the pandemic due to hygiene reasons. “I don’t use much cash anyway, but I definitely began using less during COVID,” he says. “I stopped going to my local depanneur,” which is cash-predominant and accepts debit with surcharges, he adds.

Beyond small businesses, those who predominantly use cash tend to be those on the lower end of the socio-economic scale. In Canada, three percent of Canadians, the equivalent of over one million people, are unbanked and 15 percent of Canadians, or nearly five million people, are underbanked, meaning that they have no or limited access to credit and debit for a variety of reasons, such as having a poor credit score or living in a location underserviced by banks. Correspondingly, proportional to those who are unbanked or underbanked, 15 percent of Canadians report being heavy cash users.

Étienne, who prefers to go by first name only, is an unbanked person living in Montreal who is also unhoused. His primary income is obtained through asking people on the streets for money. “It was tough, it was really tough,” Étienne says, in reference to his income during the pandemic. “It’s been tough now too, but it’s been better since COVID … More and more people use debit cards now instead of cash … they say ‘sorry, I only have debit.’”

As of 2019, cash transactions accounted for 21 percent of all transaction volume, and 80 percent of Canadians reported making at least one cash transaction per week. Of those 80 percent, over half reported giving cash to people (rather than using it for purchases) through the week.

As cash is increasingly fading out, a new player in the game, cryptocurrency, has been entering circulation, digital coin by digital coin. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have no physical form at all and can only be used for online transactions, which are processed in a decentralized fashion by brokers who cash in on every trade. Cryptocurrencies typically have finite quantities of money which ensures that the currency doesn’t lose value. This differs from physical currencies, which are protected by interest rates.

The latest figures available on cryptocurrency usage in Canada are from 2019, when it was reported that nearly four percent of Canadians were using bitcoin, and close to one percent were using the next most popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum. In 2016, 64 percent of Canadians were aware of Bitcoin, and this percentage jumped to 85 percent in 2017.

While cryptocurrency circulation is growing, increasing pressure on central banks to create their own digital currencies to facilitate transactions, in their current private form they present significant barriers to access. For one, the limited quantity of cryptocurrencies mean that they are very expensive; at the time of writing, for example, one bitcoin is equivalent to $47,784 CAD. Another major issue is that cryptocurrency transactions are expensive, with bitcoin transactions costing nearly $60 in April 2021.

Cryptocurrencies also are also uniquely digital currencies, meaning that they are again reserved for those who choose or are able to process electronic payments. Even though there were nearly 900 Bitcoin ATMs in Canada as of 2020, these only service people who want to trade in physical currency for bitcoin, not the other way around.

Professor Matt Tiessen researches digital economy at Ryerson University. He thinks that cryptocurrencies are on the rise because they can potentially circulate money quicker. “Money likes to move,” he says, “and the liquidity of cryptocurrencies permits that.” At the same time, he agrees that the cost and means of processing private cryptocurrencies present significant barriers of access. “It’s prohibitive,” he says.
Tiessen is wary, however, of the concept of a central bank-produced digital currency, thinking that it could create significant and novel annexations of economic control. “[A national cryptocurrency] would create a system of surveillance and power,” Tiessen says. “Cash just sits around.”

“Part of the allure for government in creating a national cryptocurrency would be that it could be quickly distributed, and then also expire, which would ensure that it was always being spent.” (This comes up while he is speaking about a potential Universal Basic Income issued by the government.) A national digital currency could then side-step some of the barriers to access of private cryptocurrencies, but could also reduce autonomy. “It could limit your financial freedom,” Tiessen says.

As we slowly transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic, into a version of life that involves touching, hugging, filtering between stores and homes, and feeling near to the people and things we care about, where will we go with cash? Back before the loonie, we had lots of different forms of money, but these had widespread circulation within localized communities, and, within these communities, had relative accessibility, despite general inequality.

Contactless tap might run in the same vein of magic as buying physical goods with invisible currency, or of “mining” intangible bounty. Cash, though, links us to a current, a common denominator, of which we are all a part.

Illustration by Jared Briggs

“We started this because it’s a need,” says Omar Kinnarath.

Kinnarath is the founder and one of the organizers of Mutual Aid Society Winnipeg (MAS Winnipeg). The group started in March of 2020, immediately in the wake of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Stores across the city faced severe shortages of necessities: diapers, baby formula, and toilet paper. “Basic foods were flying off the shelves because of panic-buy,” he says. The pandemic encouraged Kinnarath and others to create a network to support their community. “It’s been an idea to create a mutual aid network in the city for years, but no one’s got around to doing it. But, when the pandemic hit, it was a necessity
that we needed to do this in this city.”

Mutual aid is a form of organizing that involves sustaining cooperation and solidarity between networks, neighbours, and communities. The projects that arise from mutual aid are entirely voluntary and without hierarchy. Mutual aid groups utilize direct action, meeting people where they are, in order to fulfill their needs.

Many of the communities that mutual aid projects arise from are populated by working-class, disabled, Black, and Indigenous people. With mutual aid, anything can be exchanged, from cash to food to clothing, even artistic goods and services.

The support systems that are created through mutual aid are built and sustained regardless of socio-political conditions. The ongoing pandemic has aroused an interest in mutual aid, and in the wake of less than ideal responses from governments of every level, people have realized the power of this particular kind of organizing and its potential for ongoing transformation.

MAS Winnipeg utilized social media to meet people’s needs. “We began organizing, and we started a Facebook group,” says Kinnarath. The group snowballed, amassing 9,600 members, eight organizers, and 100 regular volunteers, assisting with various projects.

Mutual aid is a form of caretaking outside the parameters of the state, and many marginalized communities have been doing this work long before the global pandemic. “In Winnipeg, we have a large newcomer population, and we have a huge Indigenous population,” says Kinnarath. “So, those attitudes of collectivism, of collective identity and responsibility, are already ingrained in the city—I guess why this has been so successful and has grown this much is because those ideas were already in place.”

In a world that is slowly recovering, organizers are continuing their projects. However, mutual aid commitments have not been without challenges, especially for the people involved. “There’s lots of trauma going on. It’s hard to look at every day; it’s hard to manage every day. But it feels good when someone requests something, and a community member fulfills that,” says Kinnarath.

Kinnarath also explains his external frustration that has come out of doing this organizing is just how much he and others can fulfill the needs of their neighbours with few resources, and the government, with all its resources, is seemingly unable to. “When we try our hardest, there’s great success, and we do that with zero money. You have millions, billions of dollars, and you’re failing at it,” he says. But this has not discouraged Kinnarath, his fellow organizers, or other mutual aid organizers across the country.

In Halifax, premier Iain Rankin’s words rippled across the small province as he urged residents to isolate. “He told everybody to stay in place at home, and that sort of raises the question, ‘What if you don’t have a home? Where do you stay?'” says Campbell McClintock.

McClintock is a frontline resident support worker with the Out of the Cold Shelter in Halifax and serves as the external spokesperson for Halifax Mutual Aid. HMA began around September of 2020, building tiny shelters for their houseless neighbours. “Having this type of space, where somebody can feel safe, where they can store their things and where they can be protected from the elements—that’s the very first priority of Halifax Mutual Aid,” he says.

The presence of the tiny shelters in Halifax has forced the government to reckon with their lack of support for this vulnerable group of people. And in the future, it’s clear that there is a need for groups like HMA, as there has recently been a spike in real estate investment in the province of Nova Scotia, with government response yet to be seen. “There are many housing solutions that we don’t feel they’re pursuing,” McClintock says. “The city, for example, owns a number of public properties that have been sitting vacant for years … There’s no shortage of strategies.” Like MAS Winnipeg, HMA has faced challenges with their project, primarily political ones. McClintock explains, “a lot of the obstacles revolve around people thinking and stating that these shelters are unsightly or that these shelters are unsafe, that they’re bringing more trouble into their neighbourhoods.” The confrontation, he says, is part of the strategy and ultimately will help to fight for better housing conditions down the line. “My belief is that, especially for the politicians, this issue should be right in front of their face. They should be reminded every day that these are their constituents, and these are the people they ought to be fighting for.”

Mutual aid requires relationships with those you are working with. “Mutual aid is a way to approach neighbours, people in your community, who may need support, and to engage with them to try and understand what is needed and then to work with other people to gather the resources, supplies, time, and energy needed to achieve those things, on an ongoing basis.” McClintock says. The connections built between everyone involved with HMA and mutual aid groups just like them will undoubtedly prove helpful in their next steps to holding the government accountable regarding housing.

So what does the future look like to those whose main political prerogative is the now? “Mutual aid is a philosophy. It’s a type of organizing. It’s not something that could be institutionalized,” Kinnarath says, echoing McClintock’s statements regarding community solidarity. “Whatever city you go to, mutual aid organizations are holding it down.” He references the major snow and ice storm that impacted parts of the U.S. in February 2021, specifically the organizers in Texas. “Mutual Aid Houston was out knocking on people’s doors…. They were there doing the work before the Red Cross, the state government or the federal government got there.”

Mutual aid stems from a deep understanding and skepticism of traditional systems and conduits of power. Dean Spade, an American lawyer, professor, and one of the most recognizable names when it comes to scholarship on mutual aid, writes, in his book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) that this kind of organizing is “stemming from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them.” and that “[t]hose systems have often created the crisis, or are making things worse.”

One person who understands this acutely is executive director Elene Lam. Lam is the founder of Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network, known to many as simply, Butterfly. She founded the organization in 2014, explaining, “At the time, there were sex workers who were organizing. I was involved in sex worker organizing back in Asia and realized there was no platform here in Toronto, so we had to create one.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, Butterfly created a mutual fund to support sex workers impacted by the circumstances. Precarious workers from all sectors endured a difficult time, but sex workers, in particular, faced challenges from all sides this year and the last. “People feared to disclose their work and report their income because of banks freezing their accounts and police investigations,” she says. The aid fund was necessary because sex workers are denied pandemic supports. “Sex workers are not recognized as workers or people with businesses. They didn’t receive financial pandemic help meant for workers and businesses.”

Mutual aid during the pandemic was also vital to this demographic because traditional avenues of support from governments and charities hinder the lives of sex workers, and entail surveillance. “A lot of resources go towards anti-trafficking laws. We are up against that and immigration policies, and that ends up with people being scared to ask for help,” Lam says. “People frame any Asian or migrant sex worker immediately as a human-trafficking victim. They don’t know the full story of these workers because they only listen to the mainstream media, the government, who don’t listen to workers.”

Kinnarath echoes her sentiments. “When it comes to government or institutional levels, we haven’t got a lot of support from them,” he says. Because mutual aid is not tied to governments or politicians, it is fair to question if those working toward progressive gains should abandon electoral politics as we advance into the future. Kinnarath suggests it does not necessarily have to be either-or. “You can’t have the seats without the street; you can’t have the street without the seats,” he says.

“You need to first and foremost organize communities, make sure they get everything that they need or try to the best of your best ability. And you have to create mass movements, the electoral part. That’s secondary.”

In an already deeply unequal world situated in a pandemic, it is a politics that requires frankness about the current conditions people face and is best understood as a coping mechanism for dealing with day-to-day injustices, saving people from slipping into complete purgatory. Kinnarath is honest about his personal political beliefs and how he reconciles those with his mutual aid commitments. “I consider myself an anarchist. But I consider myself a realist. I believe in this sort of politics, but I also understand the current paradigm,” he says, outlining what mutual aid is all about. Mutual aid allows us to take care of one another while we are in our current positions.

In the meantime, HMA is more than prepared to continue in a post-pandemic world. “If the city doesn’t change its strategies—if it doesn’t provide sustainable, affordable housing—fine. We’ll keep building shelters, and we’ll keep amassing people and resources to be able to provide for more than just a small wooden shelter there.… And because it’s a mutual aid group that is constantly adapting to circumstances, I do feel there is room and capacity for this group to grow and do more things.”

Lam says the same of Butterfly. “We have some funding we will put towards different projects. For us, there’s not a difference between the work we are doing now and the work we plan to do going forward. Even after the pandemic.” These projects will build on Butterfly’s already existing platform of advocacy, workshops, and financial supports, allowing them to mount challenges against government policies affecting sex workers going forward.

Kinnarath says he notices a shift in the way people in his community have reacted to mutual aid, and says that it has had a butterfly effect on organizing in Winnipeg. “It seems like everybody understands what mutual aid is. People I talked to on the street that don’t even know me will thank me for my work…. Then they read up about it and then start to organize themselves, creating their own little mutual aid networks.”
Many in the mutual aid organizing space feel that sense of inspiration from other organizers. Lam explains, “We are building solidarity with other movements as well. Abolitionist movements, racial justice movements. We now know we have so much in common. We have to work together.”

“Khaleel Seivwright and the group that he’s been working with within Toronto are a huge inspiration for Halifax Mutual Aid,” says McClintock. In Toronto, North of Bloor Mutual Aid provided people in their community with assistance when booking COVID-19 vaccines in multiple languages. They began their presence in June of 2020, and throughout the pandemic North of Bloor has hosted everything from neighbourhood cleanups to free online art classes for kids. Like other mutual aid groups, they have gone beyond just supplying material goods for people, further instilling a sense of solidarity.

Kinnarath is already considering a world beyond COVID-19 restrictions. “We’re just itching to go out into the world because now, we’ve built a reputation.” The end of the pandemic is not the end of mutual aid but the beginning of new opportunities for organizers and communities to further connect, learn, and grow. “We can start having community feasts, markets, and educational events like book fairs,” he says.

“We are going to keep doing this work,” Lam asserts. She is confident this work will continue, because it has proven what organizers are capable of. “Asian and migrant sex workers know they are strong.”

Kinnarath is optimistic, too, that this work will carry on in a post-pandemic world because of the lessons it has taught us. Speaking of mutual aid projects, he says, “It’s kind of showing a new type of organization, and a new type of leadership as well.” Kinnarath says, “The movements in the future will be led by people, or be led by organized people who just put in the work.”

Photo by Leonid Iastremsky/Alamy Stock Photo

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered some of the many disparities affecting Canadian society today. One of the most outstanding examples of this are the deficiencies exposed in senior care facilities and the subsequent calls for aging in place from experts and seniors alike. (Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta observed the highest rate of seniors who perished as a consequence of COVID-19 while living in long-term care or retirement homes.)

But according to Sue Lantz, founder and managing director of Collaborative Aging, a Toronto-based consulting firm helping seniors “shape [their] own aging experience,” the options available to age in place are limited—and the price tag high.

To age in place, seniors need more than wheelchair- accessible ramps and automatic doors. “You also need to combine that with the right support. And those right supports take the form of social connections, a caregiving team, including home care, and your healthcare access,” Lantz says.

In Options Open, her five-strategy framework, Lantz defines the foundations to age in place as health, housing, social networks, caregiving teams, and resources. “The resources can be everything from your money—but also government funding or insurance plans, or other ways to resource the care or even the house,” she says, highlighting that housing is “like the platform on which the other supports can be mixed and matched.”

As nearly 50 percent of millennials in Canada seem to be delaying their entry into the housing market for various reasons, their retirement options may be undermined. In Canada, access to home ownership is increasingly limited by student debt and precarious employment. For many Albertans, the boom-and-bust economy in the province makes home ownership even harder to attain.

To thrive, seniors need to live in accessible and affordable housing located in walkable neighbourhoods with easy access to services and amenities. But if finding these conditions can be a challenge for anyone earning less than the median income in Alberta’s largest cities, what can less affluent millennials expect when they start turning 65 in 2046? Many young Albertans are anxious for what lies ahead.

For Inés Hernández-Virla and her husband, Luis Virla, home ownership seems a far-fetched dream. Originally from Venezuela, the couple has lived in Calgary since 2014, when Virla was accepted to a PhD program in chemical engineering at the University of Calgary.

Seven years and two children later, they’re still unable to afford a home in any of the walkable neighbourhoods that suit their needs and aspirations in Calgary. Part of the problem, Hernández-Virla says, is that many immigrants are starting from zero. “People born here started working and accruing wealth very young.… This is very difficult for immigrants who arrive here when they’re 30.”

Despite both being employed in chemical engineering, the couple worries about their future prospects—and their children’s. “Lacking access to home ownership limits the capital our children will have to thrive when they grow up,” says Virla.

But at least the Virlas don’t have outstanding debt. For other young Albertans, such as Mitch Dexter, paying back student loans undermines his expectations for building a future. “I don’t feel that it’s really a financial feasibility for me to be planning more than a year in advance,” he says.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Alberta in 2014, it took Dexter two years to land a position in his field of study. “I spent five years not paying those loans back, so now I’m a little bit behind some of my peers,” he says.

Dexter thinks that when he settles his student debt in the next decade, he’ll be able to think about the future—and perhaps even home ownership. “The stability offered by owning a home would be spectacular,” he says. “Especially the sense of pride of ownership, of building a space,” he says. By the time he pays off his student loans, he estimates he will be in his early forties.

But if millennials like the Virlas and Dexter aren’t eventually able to afford to buy a home, their retirement prospects are discouraging .

Today, Alberta is the province with the youngest population in Canada. It also has the highest rate of home ownership among seniors in Canada, but as the province’s population ages, some have raised concerns about dealing with a larger and less affluent senior population today and in the future.

“I don’t feel at all that this government is doing what it needs to do to support seniors in Alberta,” NDP MLA Lori Sigurdson told the Edmonton Journal in February, highlighting the need to support Alberta’s growing senior population. “A lot of housing is quite old, and we need to make sure that those are properly maintained.”

In Alberta, seniors on average spend nearly half their monthly income on expenses related to housing: rent, taxes, and household operations. Furthermore, seniors living in rental accommodations are more likely to live in inadequate housing due to issues related to affordability and dwelling conditions.

With the Alberta government seemingly planning to offload the provision of affordable housing to private organizations, co-operative housing could be part of the solution to a looming problem and allow millennials to age in place when the time comes—even without a nest egg.

Designed with community in mind, co-operative housing offers an alternative to home ownership that’s affordable, accessible and stable. According to Blair Hamilton, program manager at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, “[co-op housing] looks at a different set of priorities and gives people the freedom to still exercise together some of the responsibilities and decision-making without having the personal wealth that [home ownership] requires.”

To become a co-op member, all residents have to do is purchase a share. “It’s sort of a cross between renting and owning, and so when you leave you get your share back,” says Beth Nielsen, the president of Sundance, a housing co-op in Edmonton. A share in Sundance costs $2,000.

While co-op members don’t have any equity in their homes, they get “sweat” equity, explains Catherine Leviten-Reid, an associate professor of community economic development at Cape Breton University. “You’re actually contributing some of your time to the functioning of the co-op.”

Housing co-ops are democratic organizations that rely on their members for decision-making, as well as for the operation and maintenance of their premises. According to Hamilton, co-ops allow members “to get a level of control that you won’t get in the rental market.”

Sandra Kendrick has lived in Sundance since 1978 and she’s never felt like a renter. “I believe that a big part of that is that every member has the right to participate in the decision-making. So if something was happening that I didn’t agree with, I had a voice.”

Furthermore, the ability of a housing co-op to remain affordable depends on the volunteer work of members who join the committees that help manage and operate the co-op. And often, the value of this “sweat” equity exceeds the financial benefits for members, as collaborative work helps members develop a strong social capital and a sense of ownership, Leviten-Reid says.

Nielsen describes co-op housing as a big family. “Everybody looks out for one another, and you have some of the family members [you] don’t necessarily get along with so well, like most families. But we all try and look out for one another,” she says.

Co-op members look after one another not only by participating in the upkeep of the co-op, but also by providing internal subsidies that allow for a healthy mix of incomes and backgrounds. “I think the biggest reason that I love living here is because I can help somebody who can’t afford to live here,” says Sherry Kozak, a resident of Sunnyhill Housing Co-operative in Calgary. (The average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Sunnyside, the neighbourhood where Sunnyhill is located, is $2,000; in Sunnyhill the monthly housing charge for a similar unit is $982.)

This model helps house a segment of the population that would struggle to find suitable housing within their price range: households whose earnings are below the median, yet above the provincial low-income threshold.

“Many of our members, even though they’re not in the subsidized units, are still working class, lower-middle-class families without tons of money, and so they need affordable housing,” says Hamilton. “There’s a benefit to making sure that that proportion of the market is served, and [co-ops] are really good at serving that portion of the market,” he says, noting that housing co-ops give people stable housing, improving educational outcomes for children and community engagement—which also allows members to age in place.

“We’ve got members in different co-ops who’ve been there 25, 30 years,” Hamilton says. “They have their friends, they’re used to their neighbours, they’re active in their co-op and sitting on the board sometimes—and they don’t want to move, but age catches up with all of us.”

For this reason, Sundance members worked to develop senior-friendly, accessible units in their co-op. “We wanted to have a place where we could say, ‘Well, if I can’t do the stairs anymore, I’d like to be able to move over to a building with an elevator and lots of room to turn my wheelchair around if I needed it,’” Nielsen recalls.

Having lived in a townhouse in Sundance for 30 years, Kendrick developed health issues that compromised her ability to go up and down the stairs. “I didn’t actually have to leave my community in order to find accommodations that suit me, which was wonderful,” she says. She was able to remain in her community by moving to an accessible unit in the new building as soon as it was completed in 2009.

For Kendrick, it wasn’t just the accessibility features that allowed her to stay—affordability played an important role too. “I would probably be in an apartment in not a great neighbourhood. And probably just a studio instead of a one-bedroom,” she says. “I honestly don’t know how I would have coped if I didn’t have the co-op.”

Sundance is in Riverdale, a central neighbourhood in Edmonton, located in the city’s river valley and adjacent to downtown. Its location allows residents easy access to an assortment of amenities and activities, important factors for aging in place, according to Lantz. But while it can be hard to find a one-bedroom rental in Riverdale for under $1,000, the monthly housing charge for a unit like Kendrick’s at Sundance is $884.

Similarly, in Calgary, when Kozak lost all her income and savings due to health issues, she was able to remain in her home of nearly 30 years, but the financial aspect was only part of the support she received. “I don’t know how I could have managed if I was somewhere else, because all my neighbours here at the co-op were just so incredible about helping me,” she says. Her neighbours helped her with her groceries, brought her food when she couldn’t cook, and drove her to doctor’s appointments. They still do. “Paying someone to look after you is not the same as your neighbours caring about what happens to you,” she says.

The social component of housing co-ops is especially relevant in provinces that, like Alberta, lack tenants associations, Leviten-Reid says. Both Kendrick and Kozak benefit from remaining active in their communities, being surrounded by a diverse mix of incomes, backgrounds, and ages. This diversity keeps Kendrick feeling young and energized, she says.

Moreover, the nature of the community ensures everyone is looked after. “I love the fact that if my washer breaks down, I just call somebody in the co-op and arrange to have it fixed,” Kendrick says, aware that if she were a homeowner, she wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for any repairs.

“When I’m in the co-op I don’t need to worry about those things because the co-op has put aside money to do that kind of stuff,” she says. “For somebody like me … sort of on the lower end of the income scale, the co-op life was so much better than being a homeowner.”

Co-ops have the potential to effectively support the needs of an aging population, Lantz says. This is especially true if they are based on a solidarity model that includes municipalities and senior services in decision-making, as recommended by Leviten-Reid. Building more co-ops would add to the existing range of housing options—the problem is getting in. Both Sundance and Sunnyhill have long waiting lists ranging between 2 and 10 years, especially when it comes to senior-friendly and subsidized units.

“Sundance doesn’t have a lot of turnover, we generally have maybe two or three moves in a year, which is partly why we have such a long waiting list,” says Kendrick, who also chairs the residence committee. “But what it says to me is that people are here for the long term.”

One of the problems with that is, compared to B.C., Quebec, and Ontario, the number of housing co-ops in Alberta is small. Hamilton says this is because home ownership remained relatively affordable in the Prairies, “but that’s changed over time.”

The main challenge to developing new housing co-ops, and to expanding existing ones, is funding. Since the federal program that supported the development of existing co-ops ended in the 1990s, “there wasn’t a lot of investment in affordable housing for quite a while,” Hamilton says. And while the adoption of the National Housing Strategy (the federal government’s program meant to fund the provision of affordable housing across Canada) may help, to reap the benefits provinces and municipalities should be on board. So far they have been slow to recognize housing co-ops as affordable housing providers because of the existing income mix. Co-ops’ target is at 80 percent of the median market, Hamilton says. “We need to keep talking to municipalities that don’t understand [the co-op model] and be our own best spokespeople.”

If more government funding were available to develop new non-ownership co-ops in Alberta, in which shareholders aren’t required to pay a hefty down payment, millennials like the Virlas and Dexter would have fewer reasons to worry about the future. According to Hamilton, “if [millennials] organize in co-ops now, and they build ones that they think about in terms of aging in place—they won’t have to leave when they get to be 55 or 60.”

Photo by Ken Eckert

At the University of Toronto (U of T), most PhD students are expected to spend at least four years working demanding and often thankless jobs, all while living below the poverty line.

“It’s a very long tradition,” says June Li, finance commissioner at the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU). “You’re a PhD, you’re a starving student, you work hard, you grind, you sacrifice now for the rewards later.”

Li wants to do away with this “rite of passage,” as she calls it. Li, alongside the UTGSU, is spearheading an initiative to guarantee a basic, liveable funding package to all PhD students at U of T. They are in talks with U of T’s School of Graduate Studies with the aim of increasing basic funding to about $23,000 per year. This would be a significant increase from the current average of $18,248.

“We work full-time for our supervisors,” Li says. “If you factor in the number of hours that we work, divided by how much we get paid, we actually make less than minimum wage.”

Li says that between publishing academic articles and working as teaching assistants, PhD students’ labour is indispensable to the university. “Our research directly contributes to funding that the department gets,” she adds.

The UTGSU were inspired by a group of PhD students at U of T’s Faculty of Medicine, who, in 2017, formed the Graduate Representation Committee (GRC) and successfully petitioned for a 10 percent increase to their funding packages. This increase volleyed medical PhD students above the poverty line.
Meanwhile, the situation is worsening for other U of T PhD students. According to Li, funding package increases are “negligible” and not proportional to the increasing cost of living in Toronto. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $1,431 per month, meaning that housing alone may eat up almost 95 percent of a PhD student’s yearly earnings.

This means that only those with a wide financial safety net can afford to pursue a PhD. According to a GRC survey, 85 percent of PhD students at the Faculty of Medicine could not live on their funding package alone—but well over 50 percent of these students received financial support from a parent or partner. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that academics tend to come from high-income families and are disproportionately white: a 2019 report found that a mere 21.3 percent of U of T’s tenure-stream faculty identify as people of colour, as compared to 52 percent of Toronto’s overall population.

This initiative is a step toward remedying these systemic inequalities, as well as student precarity. “This is long overdue,” Li says. “I don’t think that we should have to choose between bettering ourselves versus being able to survive.”